


Meet Me Inside

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Series: Prompt Fics [94]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s06e05 Gum Drops, Gen, Grissom is Suffering and not having any of Nick's BS today, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25944163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: Grissom and Nick have a brief talk about the events of Gum Drops.
Relationships: Gil Grissom & Nick Stokes
Series: Prompt Fics [94]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540795
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Meet Me Inside

**Author's Note:**

> And one more prompt from an anon today! Tons of meta references to the version of Gum Drops we never got.

The cosmic joke of the whole ordeal is that Grissom was supposed to be on the case. Take the lead. 

He would have been there in Nick’s place. He would have had to rent out the motel room with Greg. He could have stolen a few moments away with Sara.

And he’s almost certain that he would have held the same belief that Nick did, that the little girl, so clever and intuitive for her age had survived the slaughter of her family, that she was continuing to fight for her life and leave a trail behind.

He would have heard her voice. Seen visions of her. Would have jumped into the lake when he spotted her on the boat. Would have held her hand in the hospital. Maybe she would have even made him a card that he would have hung in his locker, like she had made one for Nick. 

What he  _ wouldn’t  _ have done, however, was bust into the interrogation room, figurative guns blazing, and make a teenage boy piss his pants by pinning him to the wall and screaming in his face. 

Sara didn’t bother to sugarcoat the replay of events, though he wouldn’t expect her to anyway. But she did it not with the air of “please set him straight” but rather a softer one, the sisterly concern of “please talk to him he needs help.” 

And not for lack of her own trying.

And he wants to try, too, but worries that his mental capacity is not firing on all cylinders. There was a reason he had to miss the case, a guest lecture at the body farm which was an opportunity he just couldn’t pass up, but the return trip home was fraught with so many delays and so much despair that he was shocked he had made it home at all, just in time for his shift to start, and the jet lag had not quite worn off.

So to say he was irritable was putting it lightly when he saw Nick and Warrick sitting on the sidewalk outside the lab, stretched out on a bench and joking and laughing and relishing the rewards of a good night’s--or day’s, in their case, sleep. 

“Hey, there he is!” Warrick whoops as Grissom walks up to the duo. “How was the body farm?”

“Dig up anything interesting?” Nick smirks with an unreadable twinkle in his eyes. 

Crude humor, a poor man’s coping mechanism.

And Grissom has none to share.

“Nick, meet me inside,” Grissom stifles a yawn, sounding more bitter than he really meant, evident by the falling of Nick’s face but he’s too tired to really care.

“Shut the door,” he commands as he settles into his chair, and the lean back doesn’t do much to ease the knots in his back. He doesn’t realize how reminiscent this is of another instance of pseudo-discipline, though he wasn’t necessarily going to punish Nick, just give him the verbal warning and write it off as trauma induced stress and hope Ecklie is still as forgiving as he has been since his kidnapping.

Though really he knows that up to Ecklie, Nick would be suspended at the end of this conversation.

But unlike before, Nick doesn’t seem that anxious at all. He’s relaxed. Almost too relaxed. 

Which is going to make this somehow harder.

“So...what’s going on?” 

Grissom takes off his glasses and tosses them to the desk, resting a throbbing forehead against the steeple of his fingers. Perfect time for a migraine.

“The McCormick case,” Grissom sighs.

“Oh. That.” 

“Just...don’t do it again,” Grissom yawns, picking his glasses back up and resigning himself to waving Nick off. “Sign that.”

“That’s...that’s it?”

Grissom’s face scrunches in puzzlement. 

“Yeah. Unless...there’s something else you wanted to tell me?”

“I don’t know,” Nick blurts, throwing his shoulders back and hands up. “I just thought it would have been a bigger deal, I guess.”

“He was a minor Nick, that  _ is  _ a big deal. But the Sheriff is cutting you a break given all that’s happened, and so am I. Take the warning for what it is and go.”

Nick stands up, turns around but it’s not enough for him, and he leans over the chair, using his arms as support on its backside.

“I just...that case really hit me hard, man…” Nick shakes his head and lowers into a sheepish mumble.

“I’m not your therapist, Nick!” 

And that does it. He may as well have just slapped Nick in the face to match the gaping of his mouth, the redness of his cheeks, the wideness of his eyes. 

“Sorry,” Nick clears his throat, and his hand is on the door when Grissom calls him back in a much more gentle manner.

“Nicky, wait.” 

The glasses are thrown down again, and Grissom rises from his chair, extending his hand to the empty seat and beckoning Nick with dancing fingers. 

He rounds the desk and sits on top, though his back screams at him and his feet tingle in their dangle. 

“I’m not condoning what you did at all, nor punishing you for it. But...just because we’re all back together doesn’t mean that we can’t lose it all again, and I would...I would hate for you to be the cause of that. I’ve had that weight on my shoulders and it should be mine alone to carry.”

Nick nods his head into his chest.

“And you also can’t just pin a kid to a wall just to find another one. I mean, really, son?”

“Don’t call me son,” Nick mutters, folding his arms.

Grissom puckers his lips, he totally did not mean to use that term of endearment. He pinches the bridge of his nose and winces at a particularly troublesome throb in his temple before he speaks again.

“You never let me down before. Don’t start now,” and with another handwave, dismisses Nick from his office.

This time, the expression in Nick’s eyes is readable, seems to have gotten whatever it was he was searching for in his attempt to open up to his mentor. He’s spiteful, determined. 

But more importantly, listening to the warning signs of a burn out that Grissom’s trying to prevent. For him. For both of them.


End file.
